


making a conscious effort to try

by sunflowersocialist



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Changing Tenses, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Getting Together, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Inner Dialogue, M/M, it's mostly just eddie rambling about how much he loves richie bc I need that, not beta read we die like men, not intentional just. an error im unwilling to correct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 13:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21392920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowersocialist/pseuds/sunflowersocialist
Summary: As he got older, and he has more time to think about it, he supposes it's always been Richie. From the time they were kids, when Richie stuck two pieces of elbow macaroni up his nose and bothered Eddie incessantly ("I'm a walrus, Eddie, look! Look, Eddie! Eddie, are you listening? Eddie!") to now, when Richie sticks straws in his nose and pretends to be a fucking walrus again. It's down to his basic biology at this point. He's Eddie Kaspbrak, he has brown hair, he hates math, he's in love with Richie Tozier.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 98





	making a conscious effort to try

Over the course of his life, there are very few things Eddie has ever been sure of. His mother spent years of her life, to the point where he wonders why she never sat down and asked herself fucking _ why _ she was doing this to him, feeding him bullshit about dirt and germs and how everything in the entire world is dirty and contaminated. His whole life he couldn't breathe without thinking about _ sickness, illness, dying, being dead, being buried in _ ** _dirt_ ** _ , having maggots eat his brain. _ His entire life, he divided himself down to the molecule so he could inspect each tiny part of who he was, looking for anomalies, for physical, mental, emotional flaws. Anything that would tell him what was _wrong _with him.

It wasn't until he was fourteen when he learned to look at himself as an entire person, when he stood up to his mom and found a family among his friends. When a serial child killer terrorized the families in their town, terrorized his friends. He'd almost killed Bill's brother, chased Eddie down with a car until he tripped and broke his arm. If he hadn't been running in the direction of town, where an entire town could see him, he would probably be dead in a ditch somewhere. Fourteen, until he pulled back from his microscope and saw the truth of himself as clear as day. 

He's Eddie Kaspbrak. He was fourteen. He was a hysterical hypochondriac who only ever cared about being clean, and good, and never about his own well being. He had a group of friends who cared about him despite this. He had a mom who did not love him if he was not that. 

He's Eddie Kaspbrak. He's seventeen. He is a less-hysterical trying-to-be-ex-hypochondriac who cares about his friends and his own mental health and safety. He had a group of friends who cared about him wholeheartedly no matter what. He had a mom who he only had to live with for seven more months until he was fucking gone. 

There was one other thing, one secret thing, bundled deep in his heart that slowly bloomed from his chest until he was so filled with the feeling he could cry.

He was fifteen. Honestly, he doesn't even remember what they were _ doing _, only that he looked over at Richie and his whole mind cleared. 

_ Oh _ , he thought.   
  
The world clicked into place, filled itself with _ something _ , and then tipped over and poured itself out into the space between his heart and his sternum. All the muscles in his face, exhausted from laughing too much, went lax, his eyes wide, and his arms hung at his sides like two dead fish. Sunlight illuminated Richie's face and reflected off his glasses, obstructing his eyes from view, and all Eddie wanted to do was slide them off his face and really _ deeply _ look at him. For the rest of his fucking life.

** _Oh_ ** **. Shit.**

As he got older, and he has more time to think about it, he supposes it's always been Richie. From the time they were kids, when Richie stuck two pieces of elbow macaroni up his nose and bothered Eddie _ incessantly _ ("I'm a walrus, Eddie, look! Look, Eddie! Eddie, are you listening? Eddie!") to now, when Richie sticks straws in his nose and pretends to be a fucking walrus again. It's down to his basic biology at this point. He's Eddie Kaspbrak, he has brown hair, he hates math, he's in love with Richie Tozier. 

Recently, however, Eddie has been going through a crisis. Richie has always been beautiful. Yeah, he's geeky looking and bony and his glasses are fucked up because he refuses to let his parents buy him new ones, but Eddie has never seen someone so painfully gorgeous in his entire life. His high cheekbones, big eyes, and bright smile lend themselves to natural beauty, with his defined jaw and tall frame. He's angular and sharp, and sometimes, when they go swimming in the quarry, his hip bones jut out and Eddie thinks about how it'd be a really good place to put his hands if he were to ever muster up the courage and kiss him. 

Before, all Richie wore were ugly printed shirts he got from the thrift store ("Of course they're secondhand, Richie! How could anyone want to _ hold on _ to _ that _?) over plain white shirts, the ones you buy at the store that come, like, six in a pack, and khaki shorts, no matter the weather. He had one ratty jacket his Maggie Tozier continually asked him to get rid of or to replace but he refused, and the same black converse without socks. If you looked in his closet, it was the same microcosm of acidic and vomit-inducing colors all shoved together; in his dresser, a sea of only the same white tee shirt copy and pasted throughout four drawers. 

Now, after Richie and Bev went balls to the wall insane and spent half of their savings buying out every grunge thing they could find at the thrift store Eddie once antagonized for giving him a Richie's shirt-induced migraine every damn day, Richie was _ hot _ . Eddie never once thought that he wasn't, but now he's bolder, like he knows his own attractiveness and wants everyone to know too. And, on God, Eddie _ knows _ . Ripped jeans that show his long needle legs and ratty shirts that hang on his broad shoulders and curtain his stick-thin frame with a dark-wash denim jacket that he wears with colorful patches he painstakingly sews on, Eddie _ knows _how fucking attractive Richie is. 

To be clear, nothing else has changed about Richie. He's the same loud, obnoxious, crude boy Eddie has always known. He just dresses like a person now, which Eddie likes, because he can stare at Richie without actually going blind from the abusive hue of his clothes. He still makes jokes about fucking Eddie's mom, and about his dick, and about every other horrifying and disgusting thing he could possibly dig up from the recesses of his mind, but it's something that Eddie appreciates. With everything about to change, the Losers about to go off to college, the warm constant of Richie's vulgar humor is a large comfort.  
  
Since changing almost every aspect of his wardrobe, Eddie has been making a conscious effort to try and not say weird, almost stupidly sweet gross shit to Richie, just, twenty-four-fucking-seven. It's always _ sitting _ there, in the back of his mind and the back of his throat like a tumor he can't talk around. He expressed this to Bill, who just laughed without answering him, he almost tore his hair out. How can one, without telling their best friend that they've been in love with him since childhood, tell them everything they love about their best friend without telling them they've been in love with him since childhood?  
  
Needless to say, Eddie says absolutely fucking nothing, which doesn't seem to be an issue until an afternoon in late fall when the two of them were alone in the club house.

"Eddie," Richie starts, "do I look any different to you?"  
  
Eddie looked up from the calculus textbook he was acting like he understood, at _ all _ . This was not something he wanted to be dealing with on a Thursday afternoon. He quickly scans his entire brain, which has almost halved itself since he started taking calculus, for good things he could say about Richie that don't make him sound like he has a huge fucking crush on him. He does a formula. List all the shit he loves about Richie, and subtract the stuff that sounds, like, _ too _ gay, and then factor in his ability to say shit like a normal person, an ability he **does not have**, and he is left with approximately zero fucking things to say. 

"Eddie, hello? Eds! Ed-master, Eddimundo! What is UP, dude?"  
  
"What? Do you mean besides your clothes and stuff?"  
  
Richie shifts uneasily. "Yeah, sure, but like--" He fidgets from where he sits on the floor. "Anything else?"  
  
"What do you mean?" Eddie sets his book aside entirely and crawls out of the hammock.  
  
Over the years, as everyone else in the group shot up, Eddie stayed the same. Therefore, he's the only one that can still fit in the hammock without being insanely uncomfortable, despite the fact that sometimes Richie contorts his weird as shit pipe cleaner body and squeezes in next to Eddie to make him mad. It doesn't make him mad, it makes him blush and stutter because he's so fucking _ frustrated _ by touching Richie and not being able to do it in the way he **wants to** that he flips out and pushes him away before he can burst into flames.   
  
"Do I look, like, ugly, to you?" Richie asks. His voice is quiet and timid in a way Eddie has never known him in daylight. Sometimes, when Eddie has nightmares, Richie will sneak in his window and calm him down in this voice, or when they're high and they talk about everything they can, but never like this.  
  
"Rich, what? No! Who told you you were ugly?" His brow is furrowed so hard his muscles ache, and his blood is burning before he could even let it get hot. Richie looks up at him, brown eyes and fucked up glasses and freckles Eddie wants to count until he forgets how to, and Eddie loves him loves him _ loves him _ .  
  
"Nobody, nobody, I just. I got all this new shit and I'm growing out my hair and everyone seems to be paying attention to me, except _ you _ . And, it's fucking dumb because I kind of, like, _ did _ this shit for you, in a way, and I was wondering if the reason you're not saying anything is because you think I'm ugly? Or if it's just nothing big, I guess? And, like--" He clears his throat. "Yeah, that's it. It's stupid, I know."  
  
Eddie almost uses the calc book he hates so much to bludgeon himself to death. How, in his journey to sound as strictly no-homo as possible to the boy he is completely one hundred percent homo for, did he just. Not remember? To _ ever _ tell him or imply or maybe even just smile at him when he wore his hot-as-hell new clothes to say he liked them? He was such an _ idiot _ .  
  
"Hey, no, Rich, I'm sorry. I--I think you look really good in your new clothes." He takes a deep breath. Seven months, and he's out of here. Seven months. If he tells him now, he only has to stay here for seven months with that weight hanging over them, and then he's done for the summer and he can run away to wherever he gets into college. "I think you always look good, though. Like, no matter what. You didn't have to get new clothes for me to notice you. There could be a million people in a room and you're still gonna be the only one I _ really _ notice."  
  
Richie huffed a laugh and nudged him. "Woah there, Eds. You're gonna give a guy the wrong idea talking like that."  
  
"What if I _ want _ you to have that idea?" Eddie asked. He'd gone against a serial killer, and lived. He'd fought his mother, and lived. Those were hard to do. Loving Richie Tozier is easy.  
  
"What?"  
  
Loving Richie Tozier is easy. Easy, easy, easy. "I want you to get that idea. Whatever stupid shit you were about to say, liking you or being gay or whatever, which you _ knew _ and _ know _ but continue to act like you don't and make dumb jokes about it or whatever, I want you to think that. I'm gay, and you know that, and I love you, which you know but not like that. I'm _ in _ love with you. I have been since probably before I was born. Like I come out of the womb and it's like 'Oh, congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Kaspbrak, it's a boy! Twenty inches, seven pounds, in love with this asshat named Richie Tozier who was born six months ago that you don't fucking know yet!"  
  
"That's how the nurse talks? Just, shouting expletives to your parents?" Richie is laughing to the point where he has to fight to breathe, and Eddie wants to almost strangle him if this were not the most important conversation he has ever had to date. So Eddie wants to strangle him _ more _ .  
  
"Richie!" He slaps Richie on the arm with his hands, but he realizes it makes him look like a baby sea lion, and a dumb one at that, so he stops and prays Richie forgets all of this happened. "Be serious! I'm in love with you and you don't even care!"  
  
"Woah, hey!" Richie pulled Eddie's torso into his lap and hugged him. "I love you too, dude. I thought you already knew, and just couldn't figure your own shit out. I thought you were, like, waiting until you were comfortable with it, like I was, and then we could go from there."  
  
This is, possibly, the angriest Eddie has ever been. In his entire fucking life.  
  
"Of ** _course_ ** I didn't know that! Richie! What the fuck! I've been doing gross fucking _ pining _ shit for you since _ forever _ and you thought 'oh maybe he just wasn't comfortable with it, I need to wait!' Which--" He doesn't realize he's crying until he is already doing that shit, which _ fuck _ . "is so sweet I don't even know what to do, and _ Richie _ ."  
  
Richie pulls him further into his arms, kissing the top of his head. "I didn't want to push you into shit you weren't ready for. With that weird dude from a couple years ago, I thought you had more stuff in your head that you had to deal with before you unpacked your huge gay ass crush on me."  
  
"That's so considerate I can't even be mad at you, asshole!" Eddie grabs Richie's face and kisses him, which is very difficult because Richie's goofy-ass smile is stretching from oversized ear to oversized ear. "I'm so in love with you I can't handle it sometimes and you're telling me you knew the whole time? If I weren't so happy right now I'd be so mad!"  
  
"Don't be mad, Spaghetti. Save that for later when I interrupt your beauty sleep with the sound of me plowing your mom."  
  
"I'm gonna break up with you now," Eddie says, kissing Richie and going to stand. Richie doesn't even let him, pulling him by the arm and back down into his lap. A shock of pain from his knife-sharp knees digging into Eddie's back runs through Eddie's body before he settles. Richie kisses him, closed lipped and happy, and Eddie could not contain more happiness in his tiny bullshit body even if he _ tried _ . Richie's hand rests on his knee. Eddie's heart rests in his fucking hands.  
  
Richie kisses his cheek. "No, you're really not."

**Author's Note:**

> oh look it's not fucking hamilton!! something I have never done!! I'm gay and stupid and this is my current hyperfixation comment please so I don't feel like my branching out was for naught
> 
> tumblr: lol-phan-af


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